Cawley: Shale Panel Will Consider Local Impact Fee On Drillers.

The head of the Corbett Administration’s ... new Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission says the panel will consider a locally levied impact fee to help communities affected by drilling, but he wants to see hard numbers first.

“The governor has charged us with seeing how to address the impact of drilling,” Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley told reporters at a briefing after the commission’s marathon, five-hour-long opening session Friday.

Asked if that meant if he wanted to see hard numbers and evidence on the environmental and infrastructure impact of the state’s natural gas boom, Cawley said he did.

“I think we all do,” Cawley said. “We want to understand what the actual impact is.”

Cawley’s statements were close to those of his boss, Gov. Tom Corbett, who sent his clearest signal yet this week that he might be willing to consider some kind of impact fee.

But any fee proposal would have to have very specific strings attached to it -- including a guarantee that the money would not go into the state’s general fund – before Corbett said he’d consider it.

The Republican ran for office last year promising not to raise state fees or taxes as he tries to tame a $4.1 billion deficit for the fiscal year that starts July1.

State Senate President Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, whose district is in the drilling zone, has staffers drafting an impact fee bill that could be introduced in the coming weeks. The governor has said that he wants to see what the commission recommends first.

Corbett’s top energy adviser, Patrick Henderson, who sits on the shale panel, also said Friday that the administration “is cognizant that there are parallel tracks,” to the debate over impact fees.

The administration has frequently said that a tax would prompt drillers to relocate to other natural gas-producing state where it costs less to do business Pennsylvania is the only major gas-producing state that does not levy such a tax.

“A severance tax is off the table,” Cawley said. “It’s not going to be considered by us. However … if there is an identifiable impact to local governments that can be enumerated and there is costs to go with it,” a local impact fee could be part of the panel’s deliberations.

But several speakers who appeared before the 30-member commission said the state should have a severance tax – particularly in the face of massive proposed funding cuts to public and higher education in the administration’s $27.3 billion, 2011-2012 budget plan.

Those in favor included Phyllis Bennett of Dauphin County, who told the panel that the state “[needs] to think very seriously about a tax … It affects all of us.”

Joanne Fiorito, of Wyoming County, which is in Gasland, was even more adamant. She told commission members that she’d moved to northeastern Pennsylvania “to be at peace with nature.”

But “you have taken my American dream and ripped it apart,” the visibly angry woman said..

Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko painted a slightly different picture. He said the rural county is undergoing an economic boom as a result of drilling.

“If you want to go to work, you can find a job,” he said.

The advisory panel has 120 days to return its findings to the administration.

On Friday, Cawley said the panel, which takes its membership from the drilling industry, state government, the business community and the environmental lobby, would be broken into a four working groups.

Those groups would individually tackle issues ranging from health and safety concerns to workforce and economic development.

The panel spent much of its first day hearing from a battery of public policy experts who ran down the economic and environmental impacts of drilling, as well as summarizing the state’s current regulatory climate.

In opening remarks, Cawley told the panel that the drilling industry represents a huge economic opportunity for the state and, if properly administered and regulated, “phrases like ‘brain drain’ and ‘rust belt,’ are things of the past.”